Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Live Chat Session transcript on the Best Buy Forum recaps a chat with Infinity Ward about their upcoming military shooter sequel. Included is some follow-up to the revelation that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will not include dedicated server support (thanks Brave New Gamer via Destructoid). Along the way they are asked multiple times about PC dedicated servers, which they clearly resist, but designer Mackey McCandlish admits: "Our goal is to provide the best experience for our users, so nothing is ever 'off the table'. We are always evaluating our options." Infinity Ward also questions the legitimacy of the petition for dedicated servers, with Vince Zampella saying not all of its 178,000 signatures are legitimate (This petition actually now has 180,700 signatures), with McCandlish adding "402 signed it 4 times I heard." A couple of other new bits of info were also pinned down, one a confirmation that with all this talk about IW.net being a superior alternative to dedicated servers, multiplayer games will indeed be hosted by one of the players, and that the limit for multiplayer games is 18 players on a nine-on-nine match (says McCandlish: "The max number of players on all platforms are 1v1 through 9v9. This is the number of players we focused on when we were balancing map size, perks, classes, challenges, etc."). Here's the part about hosting multiplayer games:

IWNet matches players together based on several factors including ping and skill. After players are matched, the most suitable host is determined. That player hosts until they quit, at which time hosting responsibilities will normally migrate to another player without interrupting the match.

18 player limit? ROROROFL I guess all this consolization and removal of dedicated servers is driving online fps gaming back in time, whats next? 12 player limit? IWNet is gonna result in a lot of wasted time for people as they try to find a server that they ping well and experience no performance issues with the "server". rofl

Who cares about the size of the map? Choice is the important thing here. People should be able to build 64 player grenade spam maps if they want and other people should be allowed to play on them if they enjoy that game mode. No one is saying you have to if you don't want to. 9vs9 is a joke, I'm sorry but it is. I regularly play Xbox and PS3 games with larger player limits.

there are plenty of custom maps that are far larger than anything included with cod4. some are glitchy but there are some great huge custom maps out there, remakes of old mohaa maps, cod 1, and 2 maps. infact what a great idea it would be to lock everything down so you could make those maps very easily and sell them for massive profits.... ... .. .

I love how developers are going to use "balance" as an excuse for any ol' dumb decision they make.

I agree. Im getting sick and tired of the balance bullcrap arguments. Who are these philosopher kings who are the masters of balancing a game? Many games have gone through an insane amount of balancing changes and at the end of all that the fun and intensity of the game gets depleted. Quit being wimps and nerf humping these games with the stupid balance arguments.

World at War did come after COD4, so one would expect some optimization of the engine.

Perhaps IW imagined a spamfest from the design stage, I have no way of knowing that. But the fact is that despite maturity of code as the console ages, so does its technical capability compared to peer assets on the PC. That is both the blessing and curse of consoles.

But beyond the technical limitations of consoles comes the style and depth of play, interface design and button-mashing experience that many console titles employ.

That is a good point about COD4 being so butt-ass tiny that more than 9 people on a map makes it a spamfest. Every single map that I've played was a button-mashing spamfest. Again, it is the consoles limited capacity that is really hurting games.

The map size isn't console limitation, it's deliberate design. World at War's multiplayer maps are huge in comparison; the only way Modern Warfare's map size is a console limitation is if Treyarch is somehow so competent that they took the same engine and miraculously pushed the consoles' limits to well beyond what they were.

If you dislike something about Game X, that's fine, but not everything you dislike is another impending sign of the Consolpocalypse. There are enough legitimate consolization criticisms to level at enough games for everyone to share without sounding like stark-raving-mad tabloid reporters.

That is a good point about COD4 being so butt-ass tiny that more than 9 people on a map makes it a spamfest. Every single map that I've played was a button-mashing spamfest. Again, it is the consoles limited capacity that is really hurting games.

Maybe next-gen consoles will be able to match 2005 era PCs. Here's hoping, because this development shit rolls downhill.

I love how developers are going to use "balance" as an excuse for any ol' dumb decision they make.

Ha ha ha, give me a break IW. You are bang on Sepharo. "balance" actually means "So we could port the console version to PC with the least amount of work as we possibly could."

IW seems to be suffering from success-itis that we've seen so often in this industry. Just like Nintendo with the N64, Sony with the PS3 and EA years ago, game companies who are previously very successful think they do whatever they want and people will drink their koolaid. The N64 used cartridges, the PS3 was priced at $600 at launch and EA was making garbage games and they all got their asses handed to them. Though pissing off PC users won't have as big as impact as the other examples, IW looks like they might be on the way to repeating history over again.

Moriarte: Ignoring IW.net, is the PC version a direct port of the console version?Mackey-IW: No, PC has custom stuff like mouse control, text chat in game, and graphics settings.

And...

Moriarte: Will there be a multiplayer PC demo shortly after release? The PC community is largely skeptical at best right now and with no ability to trade-in or rent, this is a real gamble for our wallets.Vince-IW - No plans for a demo currently. We are still working on finishing the PC game right now (yes, I know... we need to get done!)

Sounds like it's a console port, as directly as it can come, and they're not even done porting it yet. Nice.

Editing to add this other bit of gold:

zach426 - What was your guy's logic behind removing the lean feature for PC, a feature that was a mainstay from all of your previous call of duty titles?Mackey-IW - The game is not balanced for lean.